It’s no secret that Russia has been at war with Ukraine for roughly 8 months now, and if you’ve gone to the grocery store, you’ve most certainly noticed that the price of bread has gone up. What might seem odd to the average shopper, however, is how the price of bread and the war in Eastern Europe are actually correlated.

Ukraine usually exports about 45 million tonnes of grain to the world, they rank top 5 in grain exports, however, with the ongoing conflict, these exports have slowed to a crawl. Increasing prices globally, and in some countries, causing almost nationwide starvation. In countries such as Somalia and Ethiopia, which depend almost entirely on Ukrainian exports to survive. With a potential humanitarian crisis, the United Nations proposed a deal that would allow Ukrainian grain out of the country. The deal would allow roughly 9.5 million tonnes of grain through, although a fraction of their usual imports, it would still help relieve the global food situation.

However, on the 29th of October. Ukraine launched a large-scale drone attack on the Russian black sea fleet. Although vessels were only lightly damaged, Russia still considered it a “terrorist action” and decided to back out of the deal in retaliation to these events. Although Russia backed out of the deal, the United Nations still opened a humanitarian corridor in the Baltic, to allow some grain out of the country.

With the conflict in the East coming to a boil, there are great concerns about the global food situation. If grain were to continue to be totally blocked from leaving the country, it could create a crisis of unprecedented scale. However, the United Nations has potential to relieve the effects of this.